> Unicode is a lot more concerned with what a character means vs how it displays

This was only true before emojis. Unicode introduced specific code points purely to alter visual display, such as skin-tone modifiers, etc. Now that the mission was already diluted for emo-fluff, you might as well add actually useful fluff.

Nahhh, they refuse a LOT of emoji proposals specically because they're just asking for a specific image. Here's that graveyard: https://unicode.org/emoji/emoji-proposals-status.html

The ones they DO let through, must have some sort of useful distinction in meaning to be given a code point(s). It can't just be useful as a little image of a thing. It has to provide some sort of linguistic concept that extends the emoji... language? https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#factors_inclusion

The skintone modifiers are meaningful because it can look more like someone you're talking about. "S with a left border" isn't disambiguating any sort of meaning from "S with a bottom and right border".